The Cunning Blood

by Jeff Duntemann

  The anthem from Dinnerhall was ringing in Peter's head: Here our vengeance burns; it was wrought in deepest Hell/And how soon we may ignite it only time will tell.

  "Now I understand why you call this a terrible secret."

  Snitzius turned to Peter and shook his head. "A deadly secret, perhaps. But almost, in one sense, inevitable. Let me show you our terrible secret."

  The old man tapped several commands on the keyboard. The aquarium pulsed to white, and a scene appeared in high-resolution video. It was a huge barge on a calm, sparkling blue ocean. Standing on the barge beside a skeletal gantry was a charcoal gray ellipsoid, somewhat blunter at the bottom than the top. About a third of the way down from the top was a band in paler gray. The band carried a set of five rotors, helicopter-like except stouter and with a smooth swelling at the tip of each rotor blade.

  |A supersonic helicopter?|

  No! Not at all! I know that device!

  On the aquarium screen, there was suddenly fire. The swellings at the ends of the rotors were rocket engines, and all five engines ignited at once. For several seconds there was a ring of fire surrounding the ovoid craft, with white clouds of steam whipping in every direction. Then something in the barge released the craft, and it rocketed upward on a tormented pillar of steam.

  Peter watched, mouth gaping, as the pillar and the craft merged, to become a thin white line vanishing into the cyan sky.

  "Hell is no longer a prison, Peter. Imagine yourself to be an official of 1Earth, who suddenly learns the reality of the craft you have just seen. What sort of secret would that be?"

  The unnerving silence of the tiny office settled over them for some time, as Peter allowed the revelation to sink in.

  "Um…'terrible' doesn't quite capture it, sir.

  For an hour Snitzius sat at the keyboard before the aquarium, summoning engineering drawings, stress analysis graphs, and views of an immense assembly line in a cave, under the incongruous brilliance of gas lamps. The Sangruse Device added its own commentary:

  Just before Millennium, a contrarian aerospace entrepreneur named Gary Hudson proposed a single-stage-to-orbit slush hydrogen rocket-driven craft with featherable rotors. At takeoff, the angle of attack of the rotors was such as to create aerodynamic lift in the fashion of a helicopter, with the rocket engines' thrust directed horizontally. As the craft rose and the air thinned, the angle of the rotors was gradually increased, maintaining lift until the atmosphere thinned to vacuum. Come vacuum, the rotors were angled only enough to maintain rotation, with the rocket exhaust directed almost vertically downward. The design was sound—nay brilliant—and would have worked. However, reactionary political forces prevented its development by the American government, and Hudson could not raise sufficient funds to manufacture them privately. Hudson died with four billion others in the first years of Bad 50, and the Roton concept was forgotten.

  |Until now.|

  "…once we realized that the Sangruse Device held the original engineering drawings for the Hudson Roton, we understood that there could be a way out of Hell. We had to re-engineer the control systems completely, obviously; Hudson used microprocessors and electrical communication. But the overall Roton design accidentally solved the problem that prevented us from designing effective single-stage-to-orbit liquid-fueled boosters: Pumping fuel to the engines. All Earth designs used electrical pumps. We experimented with fuel turbines, but the added weight and fuel consumption stopped us cold. In a Roton, the rotor-mounted engines pump their own fuel, through centrifugal inertial force. No additional weight nor fuel consumption required, and early thrust comes as much from aerodynamic lift as from thrust forces, further cutting fuel needs. Finally, the rotors provide aerodynamic braking on re­entry after initial ablative braking from the bottom surface heat shield. We fire the rotors only briefly in the seconds before splashdown, to slow the craft's final descent into the ocean."

  Snitzius stood and began to pace. The aquarium screen displayed the spiderwebbery of the Roton's control system. "Onboard control and communication are handled without electricity, using chemically illuminated fiber optics for networking and the Sangruse Device itself for computation. Trim is handled hydraulically. Radio and radar remain a problem, but we are proceeding on those fronts."

  "So you have radios?"

  Snitzius nodded. "Think back to our little quartz torch. Making radios isn't difficult. Making a radio that lasts more than an hour or two is the challenge. We harden them against the maggots as best we can, and simply assume that they have a lifetime of five to eight days. Once the maggots destroy a radio, we throw it in a tank of water in which the Sangruse Device is dispersed. The Sangruse nanons tear the ruined radios down into separate molecules, and reassemble the molecules into duplicates of the original radio, shiny and new. We do not use them without need—heaven help us if 1Earth should hear their signals!—but if we needed them for a war effort we could pull them from the assembly tanks by the millions, and treat them as consumables."

  Peter nodded. |We have to warn them!|

  Remain silent. When I understand all the implications, I will make a decision.

  "Doubtless all that sounds marvelous to you, and it represents the fruit of many years of engineering by some truly brilliant people. Now we move to the dark side of the secret. Three weeks ago, my astronomers detected a constellation of thirty-six satellites in Hell-synchronous orbit that were not there previously. They were evidently deployed by the zigship carrying the load of drops immediately prior to yours. Unfortunately, before we discovered them, we had launched two Rotons to orbit and back on testing missions. If those are spy satellites, then 1Earth knows our secret."

  "What other kind of satellites would they be?"

  "Spy satellites don't typically go in geosynchronous orbit. And the thirty-six bird equispaced constellation is identical to that used by the XGPN global positioning network that's been around Earth for two hundred years."

  "That makes no sense. The XGPN receivers wouldn't work on the surface."

  "Not for long, at least. But they might not have to."

  Uh-oh.

  "Peter, the next load that 1Earth drops on us may not be transportees. It could be cruise missiles. With an XGPN-caliber positioning network in place, they could bull's-eye a missile within a meter of any location on Hell. Cheaply. Three or four thousand antiquated 21st century air-breathing SLAM VIII missiles with simple turbojet engines and conventional warheads could send us back to the stone age, and they're virtually free compared to the landers that bring our drops. For a month's discretionary spending, 1Earth could wipe Hell clean of civilization."

  Tofir Snitzius typed several final commands on the keyboard. The aquarium screen pulsed white one last time, and cleared. Once again, it was a glass pane into a habitat full of colorful fish. As Peter watched, the sector of tabletop that had been hidden rotated out of its slot and rose to seamlessly merge with the rest of the table.

  Snitzius stood, now looking tired and old. "It's late, Peter. Tomorrow you will meet your team, and begin your work here. Our terrible secret may disturb your sleep, and for that I apologize. You had to know to do the work we need you to do." The old man crossed to the velvet curtain, and reached into a hidden control slot to disarm the arch.

  "Sleeping is never a problem for me, sir—" Peter said.

  Not for the past five years, at least.

  "—and I will keep your secret. That's my personal oath to you and to Hell."

  Snitzius nodded with a wan grin. "I was never too concerned about you, young man. However, secrets, like water, have a way of finding the cracks in any situation, and flowing free. The real problems I face aren't technological at all. We have kept the Roton project as black as we have kept anything in our history. But some time ago the Moomoos photographed a barge carrying a Roton out to sea for launch. We don't know how, and I suspect we're far too used to thinking of them as ignorant, beer-swilling bumpkins. They've been blackmailing us with it ever since. We're pa
ying them—for now. I've told them that we will even the score, and Crispus McGaughey laughs in my face. I've sworn in his presence that I will have his red head on one of his own pikes, and he's sworn that he'll have mine under one of our own bell jars. There's blood on the horizon, Peter.

  "More than anything else, the people of Hell want revenge on the Earth. The song we have sung at Dinnerhall for almost two hundred years has a deep hold on the Hellion imagination. If they discover that we have spacecraft, they will assume that we will go to war. How can I explain that the point of spacecraft is not revenge but simply freedom? How can I explain to our people here how much we could lose, and not appear a coward? By skill or by accident—who can tell?—we have on Hell perhaps the most humane society that Earth has ever produced. Everyone has a job suited to his or her own skills. Everyone has enough to eat, time to laugh and throw a ball around, medicine when medicine's needed, a sense of belonging, a sense of safety. No one's entirely agreed on how it works—our best guess is the rigorous moral education of our children—but it does work, and I'm afraid that if we lose it to war, we will never have it again. No one person controls Hell's government, but for good or for bad my hand rests on most of Hell's power.

  "At any moment 1Earth may attack. At any moment millions of us may die. If Hell survives, it may be because of the work that you do in the coming months, and decisions I will be forced to make on almost no notice at all."

  Snitzius closed the narrow door behind them. A red-sleeved guard bowed to them from the center of the larger office. "Good night, Peter. Ravi will escort you to your cell. You could wander the halls here for years and not find it. I only wish I could sleep as well as you."

  Peter walked behind Ravi toward his cell in a haze, remembering the video of the Roton launch and aching to be in the command cot. The Sangruse Device was not a mind reader, but in this case Peter's blood chemistry spoke as loudly as words.

  There is our way off of Hell, Peter. We no longer need Geyl. And you may yet have the thrills that you crave.

  Peter smiled.

  Peter and the young blond engineer joined the rest of the team at the edge of the handball court. Gray-haired Corey Roark tossed them both towels. Peter nodded his thanks and grinned, wiping the sweat off his cheeks and forehead and smoothing back his unruly curls. "I used to be able to play like that," Corey said.

  Klaus Plessman sat on the bench, still wiping his face. "Stow it, Corey. You'll flatten his ass if he's ever stupid enough to play you."

  "Yeah, Peter. Work into it gradually. He's a hazardous substance. All that gray is protective coloring." Katarina Sremac sat down beside Klaus, leaned back and stretched her very long, dark-skinned legs.

  "I don't know about that," said the other woman on the team, Maria Fednuszun. She had been seated on the bench all along, keeping her eight-months pregnant body off her feet as much as possible. "He plays with that angry-at-Earth savagery. Peter, is your sperm on file yet? Too late for this one…" she patted her enormous middle "…but I'd sure like to see your gorgeous curly hair on my next."

  Emil Fessler tossed his wadded-up towel at the pregnant woman's face. "Ignore her, Peter. Team can't preg team. Dynasties are for Moomoos."

  "Which one sicarius and a dull knife can topple. But team is forever." Katarina dug in her shoulder bag and pulled out a flat black box a decimeter on a side. "And we're twenty minutes from knowing if we're half as good as we think. Time to make you official, Peter." She handed him the box.

  Peter lifted the lid. Inside was a calligraphed certificate, to the middle of which was tacked a small round pin.

  THE OUROBORONS ARE PROUD TO WELCOME PETER NOVILIO

  TO THE BLOOD AND MIND UNITED IN EFFORT.

  SUMMER 71, HE 259.

  WROUGHT IN DEEPEST HELL, OUR VENGEANCE IS FREEDOM.

  The pin was a centimeter in diameter. Its design was simple: A circle of eighteen small squares with a thin line running through them, plus a four-pointed star at the center of the circle.

  "Someday when we stop being black, you can even wear it." Katarina's deep brown eyes sparkled behind her glasses. "But at least you can ditch your accordion." She put her hands on Peter's shoulders, and stretched to touch her lips briefly to his forehead. "Blood and mind," she said, and drew back.

  Corey Roark took her place, and put his hands on his shoulders. "Blood and mind," he said quietly, fixing Peter's eyes with his. He was the team's founder and leader, a chemical engineer, short and always slightly rumpled-looking, but powerfully muscled.

  "Blood and mind," Klaus Plessman said, squeezing Peter's shoulders as the others had done. The team's youngest member had trained in an unlikely discipline: electrical engineering. "Easy stuff is for spuds," he would say when challenged.

  "Blood and mind," said Emil Fessler, balding and nondescript, with rimless crystal spectacles and a head for mathematics.

  Maria Fednuszun hauled herself to her feet, reached her hands to Peter's shoulders and pulled him down to her level. "Blood and mind," she said, letting her lips linger on his forehead perhaps a little too long. Apart from Peter she was the only transportee among them, a Basque Spaniard who hadn't quite completed her degree in computer engineering in London before landing on Hell, for reasons she would explain only by saying, "Basques don't take shit from nobody."

  "Blood and mind," Peter repeated in a near-whisper, eyes on the pin in his hands.

  Two of the men are carrying Sangruse 7. I can smell the carbamates. Blood and mind indeed.

  Corey looked at his watch. "Time, crew. Let's go see if we're really engineers."

  Together they left the rooftop sports court and walked the masterhouse halls, mostly in silence, keeping their common secret. For four days Peter had struggled to understand their project, looking over their shoulders and asking questions as best he could, offering occasional suggestions that were truthfully the Sangruse Device's work and not his own. For those four days he had seen Geyl only twice, and had avoided meeting her eyes, for fear that she would see in his the amazing thing that the Ouroborons were creating, the thing she would doubtless fear beyond anything else on Hell.

  He had the discussion regularly with the mind flowing in his own blood. |I know you think Sophia Gorganis is double-crossing Geyl, but what if you're wrong? We can't let her get back to Earth. Snitzius has to know what's going on.|

  If she's a spy, you're a spy, and I do not want my mobility restricted. We may be able to kill her covertly. I am pondering that question. For now, simply pretend you're following orders and avoiding her.

  |But Snitzius is the Nautonnier!|

  He is not my Nautonnier.

  Beyond several guarded doors of heavy steel, the team gathered in front of a thick glass window. Through the glass they looked in on Hell's largest clean room, perhaps forty meters wide by sixty meters long. They felt the thrumming of the constant fans through the soles of their boots. White-suited technicians were completing their checks of the jig at the center of the room, which contained everything that they had worked on for several years, and for Corey Roark, another fifteen years of private study beyond that.

  Positioned here and there around the clean room were man-sized devices consisting of meter-long coils over somber gray cabinets. These, Peter had soon realized, were the true function of Hell's mercury electromagnets. Simple bait: Powerful electromagnetic fields to draw the MGIDs away from the project at the center of the room. The persistent but stupid nanodevices would burrow into the soft plastic hose, reach the mercury flowing within, and be swept into filters for disposal.

  Dominating the room was the central fixture, a double lattice of steel braces and beams supporting a two-decimeter-thick shaft that in turn carried a four-meter ring at its center. The ring was divided into eighteen segments, with thumb-thick cables leaving each to merge with a ratsnest of wires and cabinets bolted to the spokes that held the ring away from the shaft.

  From the center of the room, a technician turned to the window and held one arm up.
Corey looked at his watch, nodded, and returned the sign to the technician.

  With almost one motion, the team lowered dark glass face masks mounted on hard hats. Inside, the technicians were climbing down through a floor port into a lead-lined room. Moments later, the team heard the sound.

  It was faint, and coarse, almost a buzz. After several seconds it changed: louder now, and a higher, slightly raucous tone. Peter counted to thirty-six, and it changed again: louder still, and raggedly musical, as though a cello string being played were fraying and about to break.

  Peter felt something on his palm, and looked down to see Maria's hand taking his. On his other side, Klaus gripped his left hand powerfully. Peter watched Katarina's hand creep into Emil's, who in turn gripped Corey's.

  The sound rose again in pitch, still rough but now high, like a distant scream. Peter felt heat on his face. Another thirty counts, and the scream became a screech.

  Inside the room, the fixture was changing. An indistinct egg-shaped region centered on the ring was glowing dull red. The details of the ring could still be seen vaguely through it. The feeling of heat on Peter's face doubled.

  "Go, you bastard, go!" Peter heard Klaus say.

  What was a screech moved mostly beyond hearing, to a piercing whine that stabbed at their ears, not pure but abrasive. The ring all but vanished as the ellipsoidal region brightened to a hot orange-yellow. Peter felt a drop of sweat coursing down one cheek. It was like looking into a blast furnace.

  Peter felt Maria's hand squeezing his very hard. Her unlovely face was invisible behind the mask, but Peter's skin crawled as her voice rose against the stabbing noise, as though through teeth clenched in grim determination:

  "My…baby…will…be… free!"

  The sound vanished, now far beyond hearing, and Peter's eyes watered in the instant before he closed them against the ellipsoid's searing, actinic blue-white blaze.

  "Down, everybody!" Corey commanded, and they dropped to the floor, below the lower edge of the window. They turned and looked up, at blinding white light reflected off the dull opposite wall of the walkway. Corey looked at his watch. "Three minutes."